Board of Peace\u2019s 15-point roadmap<\/a> is a calculated deception designed to preserve both its weapons and its grip on the territory over the long term.<\/p>\nCol. (ret.) Amit Assa, a former senior Shin Bet official with more than 30 years of experience in the security agency, told JNS that the Board of Peace, established by U.S. President Donald Trump, is structurally compromised from the outset.<\/p>\n
Board seen as structurally flawed<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Board of Peace, as it was established by Trump, already constitutes a problem for Israel. It\u2019s ostensibly meant to be an objective body, but in practice it isn\u2019t. Those actually driving developments there are Qatar and Turkey, Erdogan, of course, assisted by the Egyptians. For us, this means the Muslim Brotherhood,\u201d Assa said.<\/p>\n
He argued that the entire structure serves as cover for preserving Hamas rather than dismantling it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is essentially a non-violent fa\u00e7ade for an organization that is actually working to preserve Hamas\u2019s power by every possible means, in a way that isn\u2019t visible to the eye, and this whole matter, from the moment this Peace Board is established, constitutes a problem for Israel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Assa said the plan\u2019s central flaw lies in how it defines disarmament.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo disarm Hamas of its weapons doesn\u2019t mean leaving heavy or light weapons in Hamas\u2019s possession,\u201d he said, adding that it also cannot mean allowing the terrorist organization to retain any policing capability.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means disarming Hamas of its weapons and dismantling Hamas,\u201d Assa argued, warning that any arrangement preserving a Hamas-linked administrative structure would leave the organization intact.<\/p>\n
\u201cHamas is a murderous terrorist organization that cannot continue to exist after Oct. 7, and therefore any action taken today that constitutes dialogue with Hamas, or the creation of some internal body meant only to manage administration, with ostensible officials who continue to run Hamas\u2019s control of Gaza, means Hamas continues to exist as it is. This is something we must not agree to,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n
Pushing for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before any actual disarmament is part of Hamas\u2019s survival strategy, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis entire effort is essentially about planting an idea in the minds of Europeans and Americans that it\u2019s logical for the IDF to be replaced by some other, ostensibly neutral security body established from within the Peace Board, which would replace Israel at the points where Israel is supposed to withdraw to something resembling the pre-Oct. 7 international lines, while they handle security,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Assa said the approach mirrors past failures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know from our own experience that every time we handed responsibility to an international organization, like the U.N. or other organizations on other borders of ours, when there was some kind of buffer zone, our enemy eventually just entrenched itself there. The best example of this is Hezbollah, which settled in regardless of whatever procedures or understandings existed under which an international organization was supposed to preserve it. Israel cannot live with someone else guarding its security. That, of course, is not going to happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that Israel\u2019s intelligence grip on Gaza is now significantly stronger because of the sustained IDF and Shin Bet presence on the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe now have access to the territory, something we didn\u2019t have when the Oslo Accords led to us not being present at all inside the Gaza Strip and behind the border lines. This relative advantage immediately shows we have greater ability today to locate terror operatives and act against them operationally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Assa said Israel\u2019s pursuit of the Oct. 7 perpetrators will continue regardless of any ceasefire or diplomatic arrangement.<\/p>\n
\u2018Germany 1945\u2019 model for Gaza<\/p>\n
Maj. Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff and former Israeli national security adviser, told JNS that Israel\u2019s campaign objective in Gaza should be full military occupation followed by Israeli administration, rather than a negotiated arrangement with intermediaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe campaign objective in Gaza has double significance, both because this is Hamas, an Iranian forward outpost, and also because it opened this war on Oct. 7. The campaign objective of the military in Gaza needs to be the occupation of Gaza and the imposition of military and civilian government\u2014in one phrase, Germany 1945,\u201d Dayan said.<\/p>\n
He argued that most Gazans support Hamas and that defeating one iteration of the group without sustained control would simply allow successors to emerge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t control it for at least a certain period, and afterward a higher authority, then even if you dismantle Hamas A, there will be a Hamas B and a Hamas C,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dayan said the current international process, while fundamentally flawed, should nevertheless be used to Israel\u2019s advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe international process we\u2019re facing today is a sterile process and, in my opinion, doomed to fail, but we need to leverage it to achieve additional gains for ourselves. First, we can\u2019t reject it outright, because we already agreed to the 20-point plan. So since it already exists, let\u2019s see how we can make use of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He cited Israel\u2019s operational advantages, including sole possession of a large ground force in Gaza, control of 60% to 70% of the territory, and superior intelligence capabilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn short, to disarm Gaza you need to plow through Gaza. It\u2019s not just tunnels\u2014anyone can be hiding, say, five rockets,\u201d Dayan said.<\/p>\n
He argued that Israel must insist on the demilitarization of the entire Gaza Strip, not merely Hamas\u2019s declared arsenal, noting that rockets, RPGs and explosives remain buried throughout the territory.<\/p>\n
Competing visions for disarmament<\/p>\n
On operational steps, Dayan proposed tying the IDF\u2019s rules of engagement directly to verified territorial disarmament.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom now on, since the idea is that they\u2019re supposed to disarm Hamas of its weapons as a starting point, we need to tell them: you do this territorially, not in general terms. You clear a neighborhood\u2014you go through it\u2014and afterward, if there\u2019s someone armed there who isn\u2019t from the international force, we eliminate him, and we expand this in stages over more and more territory in Gaza,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also suggested Israel demonstrate its disarmament methodology using areas already under its control.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could do demonstrations in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley\u2014take a refugee camp, not one we\u2019ve already handled, and show them, here\u2019s how we do it. This also serves us in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, but it also shows them the achievement that\u2019s being demanded,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked about Hamas\u2019s proposal to place its weapons under a Palestinian body\u2019s supervision, Dayan dismissed the idea outright.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems delusional to me that this would even succeed. We should be saying: the point is demilitarization, not placing weapons somewhere so someone else can pick them up later.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis weaponry needs to be destroyed, in principle. And we can do that, because we also need to remember that in Gaza today, aside from tunnels, there are already weapons underground, rockets, RPGs, anti-tank missiles, and even just unexploded ordnance. All of it must be located and, in principle, destroyed. There\u2019s no reason to collect these weapons for someone else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Board of Peace released its 15-point roadmap on July 31 after President Donald Trump announced that Hamas had accepted a disarmament framework. The plan calls for heavy weapons, tunnels and weapons-production sites to be decommissioned and placed under the control of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza once the International Stabilization Force deploys and Israel completes a phased withdrawal.<\/p>\n
Senior Hamas foreign leadership member Ghazi Hamad told Arab media outlets, including TRT Arabic, on Tuesday that heavy weaponry would be stored under NCAG supervision and remain in Palestinian hands, explicitly ruling out Israeli involvement in enforcement. He said the arrangement depended on four conditions: completion of Phase 1 commitments, a phased IDF withdrawal according to schedule, deployment of the NCAG and the international force, and the dismantling of local Israeli-backed Palestinian militias.<\/p>\n
Residents of Gaza Envelope communities issued a public warning on Tuesday, demanding three non-negotiable conditions: that disarmament be conducted solely by Israel rather than by a Palestinian or international body; that no IDF withdrawal occur before disarmament is complete; and that any eventual withdrawal be limited to the strategic Ridge 70 line, which rises about 70 meters above eastern Gaza City and lies some 2 kilometers from the Gaza-Israel border.<\/p>\n
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s office said in a statement released on July 31 that Israel demands \u201cthe full disarmament of Hamas, including removal of the weaponry from Gaza and the complete demilitarization of the Strip as a condition for any process\u201d of withdrawal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Aug. 5, 2026 \/ JNS) Israel is quietly reducing the pace of its strikes in Gaza, even as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-576213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}